Saturday, February 28, 2015

We sort of do that in 'reducing' natural language suitable for code and compile. The game 'Chinese whispers' may be something of an example of what you're on about. Our personal banter would not be possible if taken literally. Much language is highly constrained by manners intended, as you say, to be translated by others we fear will mis-interpret.

We have machines that are linking material we don't expect them to now. I have long thought of this as 'spreadsheet-database reasoning' though most hearing the words think of some odious accounting-type stuff. The machines can take far more into account than we manage. Translation of a boring neo-liberal speech by Cameron to the correct German, or in reverse of one by Mutti into English is not anything like how both speeches would translate in me. Machine translation might actually add a critique.

Clarity seems at work in your suggestion Chris. I can translate 'I really like Gabby' into German, but we'd still have no idea what message I was really sending or how it was received. Ich habe ein großes Bedürfnis translates as I have a great need, or I need a piss in patois. We could think of a different kind of translation.

It's also possible to think of a site like this with instantaneous translation - we might then have to be more active readers on the possibility of mistranslation and learn more tolerance.

On Sunday, March 1, 2015 at 2:51:39 AM UTC, Chris Jenkins wrote:

"Google translate and similar do a fair job, but if you translate to German and then back to English really significant nonsense comes out"

As is clearly demonstrated by the attached English translation. :D

And yet, I wonder how careful we would be with our words if we were consciously aware they always had to be fed through a translator to reach someone else. And then I wonder why we don't realize that they already are, even when we're speaking in the same "Mother Tongue" (I love how that translated).

The German sounds somewhat more hostile than the translation Chris. There's some work on how tone of voice affects decision. Argument content rarely does well. Voice to text converters I've tried always fail (slightly better if grandpa leaves his teeth in). We do know bilingual (and multi) brains work differently than those with only one language. And little AI programmes outperform us on old arcade games and most of us at chess.

When it comes to talking to machines, natural language has been a pisser - though I hear claims we may be getting round this. Google translate and similar do a fair job, but if you translate to German and then back to English really significant nonsense comes out. Spoken language is noise-ridden, and even then maybe only ten percent of what humans communicate face to face.

Though we like to think picking up on nuance and emotion is smart, this may be very misguided - especially as we are so easily conned by liars, psychopaths and narcissists. Psychos do three times better with parole boards than ordinary criminals, suggesting something is lost in translation by worthies on parole boards. My daughters were even more successful with me.

We have machines working on Identifying sickos and psychos based on language (text) use. The basic idea is to place some text from obvious to sickos, identify Which words, phrases, syntax and so on They use, then program the machine to spot them. We are doing something similar with facial recognition and gait analysis. The way we walk is like a fingerprint.

In emotional intelligence tests we find a lot of smart people (and dumb ones) do not get facial expressions as They are supposed to. Having seen many smiling assassins I'm not sure who is getting this wrong.

I'd Probably want to examine presuppositions on the bit lost in translation from the perspective did natural language is not as smart as we think anyway and May have a prime directive of confusion and deceit. And I miss Francis too.

On Sunday, March 1, 2015 at 12:56:27 AM UTC Chris Jenkins wrote:

What if the only way we could communicate was not understood by other software capable of emotions? Digital communication not convey tone now, imagine if they also lost nuance in translation?

I'm thinking about this because I have the conversations in this group often break into two people together to talk over. I wonder if the other speakers understand at all. If our words not only lost her tone, but also their native dialect; if it was something even the speaker does not understand before they can receive from another person, we would be able to communicate at all?

I wish Francisco were here to weigh; he would have insight I'd valuable as a native English speaker who has spent so much time in a country with a language other than their mother tongue to find. Gabby has been similar insight, how much time she spends in English with us, (and how many times have I asked if I missed a sense in translation), but I guess they are usually only fun poorly translated make my German , : D